A Higher State of Consciousness

An 1995 acid house/trance track by Wink (Josh Wink) on the Strictly Rhythm label. It solidified Josh Wink's position as one of the foremost innovators in underground dance music at the time. It also spawned a plethora of copycat tracks (my personal favorite of these is Acid Worm by Bosco) that continue up to this day.

There were several mixes, but they all had the same basic structure. A funky breakbeat was looped, reinforced by an 808 kick drum. A vocal sample would say, "opening to a higher state of consciousness," timestretched, as if pushing your consciousness up to that very level. A subdued 303 bassline would kick in, then the beat would build up. The vocal sample would play again, then the 303 would start to build up. The beat would stop. The 303 low-pass filter knob would be progressively turned up, and the resonance would eventually go fully open, and the beat would slam back in. The 303 knobs would go wild at this point, the peak of the song.

It's an old track in terms of dance music, but I still like to break out the 12" once in a while. It's such a classic. The number of blatant copies are evidence of how popular this track was, and its influence can be heard on many dance tracks today.

Addendum Nov 19, 2000: The acid tweaking sounds almost reach self-oscillation, which a stock TB-303 is incapable of. Several sources claim the sound actually comes from an MC-202, or possibly the SH-101 which has similar circuitry. Another source claims it is a Juno-106 that has been clipped at mixdown. There is supposedly an interview out there where Josh Wink says it is in fact a 202, but I have not seen this interview.